Album Review: Grave Dancer’s Union by Soul Asylum (1992)
After conducting copious research (several carefully worded google searches) I have determined that Soul Asylum do not get nearly the love they deserve from the alt rock community. Seriously, they get mentioned so little in discussions of music from this genre that I had to double-check to make sure they weren’t Canadian (they are, in fact, from the Midwest so I was close). And sure, I get that it was a crowded market when they were coming up, but the fact that none of their songs besides Runaway Train ever really got much traction should be listed among other global atrocities in the Geneva Convention. In particular, we should all be paying more attention to Runaway Train’s parent album Grave Dancer’s Union, because this bad boy is jam-packed with giant riffs, perfect pacing, and an opening track run for the ages.
Let’s get into the track-by-track:
Somebody To Shove
From buckle-up-here-we-go guitar squeals to the menacing thunder of the drum intro you know you’re in for something good with one. Somebody to Shove provides an explosive opening for the record with a heart-pounding relentlessness that feels like its building towards something terrifying. That build up snaps into mania as the chorus kicks in and that tension-release continues throughout the song. Every verse feels like a coiled spring winding tighter and tighter until the energy finally overwhelms all attempts to contain in by the chorus. Warning: may cause spontaneous head banging and air drumming.
Black Gold
We already know that Runaway Train gets all the flowers on this record, but Black Gold deserves more love as a strident, heartrending, and desperate call to the void. This is a personal favourite of mine, capturing a desperate and doomed flight in a broken-down car covered in the dust of the hometown you’re desperate to escape, a spot that once had a playground in which you’d “sure like to feel some pride/ but this place just makes me feel sad inside.” This song sounds like striving against fate, our narrator knows they’ll never make it out but they hold their head (and middle fingers) up against the malevolent gods anyway. Sonically, there is another fabulous juxtaposition at work here with massive-sounding power chords contrasting some almost-folky acoustic sections. The into is a beautiful little waterfall of delicate guitar notes before the chords come crashing in against Dave Pirner’s ragged vocals. He genuinely sounds like he might be losing his voice or trying not to cry by the outro and you can feel every note right in your chest.
Runaway Train
Now despite my textual side-eye-ing of this song earlier it really is the icon of the album for a reason. Its emotional, its beautiful, it layers chords like the best five seconds of Paradise City, and it does all this while remaining both eminently sing-along-able and air-guitar-able despite its deeply depressing subject matter. The instrumentation upswells like a cresting wave and Pirner reaches out through the speakers to all the young, the restless, and the hopelessly hopeful – this song is for all of us who have felt like we “should be getting somewhere” but end up stuck “neither here nor there.” And if all that’s not enough the music video featured pictures of missing children and was later credited with helping find 21 of them – pretty cool.
Keep It Up
Every time I listen to this album it is reaffirmed for me that this opening run truly doesn’t get talked about enough. Keep It Up continues to deposit dust on the skip button with a propulsive drum-and-bass combo and some legitimate guitar wizardry during the solo. This more of a straight-ahead rock song structure-wise than the previous two power ballads and it fulfills the obligatory quotient of “na na nas” for 90s alt album. Thematically this song continues the themes of desperation and bravado cloaked self-doubt from Runaway Train and Black Gold – just listen to the quiet fear in how Pirner repeats “if I can keep it up” during the chorus.
Homesick
Homesick slows things down with dreamy, sparkling guitars and a prettier, softer side of Mr. Pirner’s vocals. This is a gorgeous, wistful little song about finding your place in the world and feeling lost along the way. The lyrics acknowledge loneliness and longing saying “we are not of this world” but provide hope for a happy ending because even it takes a while to find “there’s a place for us”. A love letter to all the outcasts wondering if they’ll ever manage to find “the home they’ve never had.”
Get On Out
Wake up dickheads we ain’t sad no more! If Homesick was starting to lull you to sleep, Get On Out provides the aural equivalent of cold water to the face. It plays with the same themes of self-doubt that appear elsewhere on the record and then yanks you up off the floor and reminds you that sometimes you just have to get on out of your own head and keep slogging forward. It makes a compelling case against wallowing backed by a once-again-massive sounding instrumental background. Everything about this song makes it impossible to sit still.
New World
This one kind of feels like a Homesick Part Two to me with its clear, ringing chords, and overall softer tone. As the song goes on the sound gets heavier and darker as each chord is deliberately dropped like a stone into a clear lake.
April Fool
This is such a departure from anything else on the album and it breaks up what might otherwise become a predictable sonic pattern. April Fool sounds like the best parts of 80s rock music through a veneer of pure-90s irony. Huge drums and big, juicy chords build a chorus that comes off almost Aerosmith-esque while the lyrics mock the kind of self-centered hedonism pedaled by 80s emblems like Mötley Crüe. Pirner swaggers through lyrics like “night drivin’ with no headlights/ wearing sunglasses too” and then sneeringly (and self-awaringly) spits that he’s only doing it “to cover up everything that’s defective”and then it all devolves into joyful chaos in the outro.
Without A Trace
We’re back on familiar territory here for another personal favourite of mine –maybe because it sounds like a more joyful version of Black Gold. Instead of escaping a beat-down small down in an equally beat-down car here we’re blazing down a desert road in a classic mustang. This one sounds like open roads and leaving it all behind – the song doesn’t claim that leaving will be easy, but unlike in Black Gold we know better things are coming around the next bend in the road.
Growing Into You
This one is, at its core, just a good old-fashioned banger, with strangely menacing lyrics. Crucially, it provides another showcase for Grant Young’s skull-slamming drums and a guitar break during which Dan Murphy manages to anticipate the Strokes’ entire career in about 30 seconds.
99%
Unlike the previous track, this is not old-fashioned anything. 99% is a clanky, heavy, experiment in industrial rock with lots of squealing metal noises and an oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. It really does sound like every chord weighs 1000lbs and requires some seriously heavy machinery to transfer from amp to track. Those janky noises and cynical lyrics are held together by the bulletproof bass and drum combo that never falters across this record. The outro for this one deserves particular attention for its downward-spiral scream into guitar feedback – chef’s kiss.
The Sun Maid
The familiar, lullaby-like sound of The Sun Maid is weirdly jarring after the at-the-rave-with-General-Grievous-vibe of 99%. This is a pretty, comforting song that sends this album off into the night with swooning guitars and kiss on the cheek.
Bonus Song: It’s not on this record, but I also highly recommend you do yourself a favour and go listen to Soul Asylum’s cover of Rhinestone Cowboy off their live album After the Flood: Live from the Grand Forks Prom, June 28, 1997- its an incredible rendition.